[ExI] More thoughts on sentient computers

Sat Feb 25 15:25:18 UTC 2023

On Sat, Feb 25, 2023 at 8:41 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Big art prize in Britain went to a person who turned the lights off and
> then back on in a museum.  This is art?  ;You can do anything to a canvas
> or wood or stone and someone will find value in it and some will call it
> art.
>
> I think we cannot conclude anything from that except that calling
> something art could include the whole universe with God the Creator.
>
> So as a matter of calling something creative I think we have to have some
> standards.  Really, really bad art is still art but the level of creativity
> is in question.  An AI winning an art contest is in the same category as
> those prizes won by chimps and elephants.  Let's define creativity a bit
> more strictly, shall we?   bill w
>
>
Do you find anything on this webpage creative?

https://www.midjourney.com/showcase/recent/

Would you say none of them were creative if all of them were created by
human artists?

Jason

> On Fri, Feb 24, 2023 at 3:08 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 24, 2023, 11:22 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> We don't understand creativity and thus cannot program it into our
>>> computers.  But that is what gives humans the flexibility the computers
>>> lack.  A computer has to go with probability - humans don't (and anyway are
>>> not very good at it at all).  So wayout solutions, the vast majority of
>>> which don't work or backfire, do happen, improbably.  We want instant
>>> answers from computers, while humans find solutions that took many decades
>>> or centuries to discover, and perhaps were always counterintuitive (aka
>>> crazy).
>>>
>>> bill w.
>>>
>>
>>
>> I would argue that is no longer the case, given the advances I describe
>> here:
>>
>> https://alwaysasking.com/when-will-ai-take-over/#Creative_abilities_of_AI
>>
>> This article is a few years out of date, modern AI is vastly superior at
>> creating art now compared to the examples available at the time of my
>> writing. One AI generated art image won a competition (competing against
>> human artists).
>>
>> I would say creativity is just permutation plus a value selector. In this
>> sense, we have had creative algorithms for decades (e.g., genetic
>> programming / genetic algorithms).
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Feb 24, 2023 at 10:07 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 23/02/2023 23:50, bill w wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > another question:  why do we, or they, or somebody, think that an AI
>>>> has to be conscious to solve the problems we have?  Our unconscious mind
>>>> solves most of our problems now, doesn't it?  I think it does.  bill w
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> That's a good question.
>>>>
>>>> (If our unconscious solves most of our problems now, it's not doing a
>>>> very good job, judging by the state of the world!)
>>>>
>>>> Short answer: We don't yet know if consciousness is necessary for
>>>> solving certain problems. Or even any problems.
>>>>
>>>> Longer answer: I suspect it is necessary for some things, but have no
>>>> proof, other than the circumstantial evidence of evolution.
>>>>
>>>> Consciousness evolved, and we know that evolution rapidly eliminates
>>>> features that don't contribute to reproductive fitness, especially if they
>>>> have a cost. Consciousness almost certainly has quite a big cost. This
>>>> suggests that it's necessary for solving at least some of the problems that
>>>> we've met over the last 300 000 years (or at least for *something*
>>>> that's useful), or we wouldn't have developed it in the first place. Or if
>>>> it happened by accident, and wasn't good for survival, we'd have lost it.
>>>> So we can conclude at the very least that consciousness has been good for
>>>> our survival, even if we don't know how.
>>>>
>>>> It strikes me as noteworthy that the kinds of things that our computers
>>>> can do well, we do poorly (playing chess, mathematics, statistical
>>>> reasoning, etc.), and some things that we have evolved to do well, our
>>>> computers do poorly, or can't do at all (hunting and gathering, making
>>>> canoes, avoiding hungry lions, making sharp sticks, etc.). Perhaps
>>>> consciousness is the (or a) missing ingredient for being able to do those
>>>> things. Yes, arms and legs are an obvious advantage, but many other animals
>>>> with arms and legs never developed like we did.
>>>> As the former things tend to be abstract mental things, and the latter
>>>> tend to be highly-co-ordinated, complex physical things, maybe
>>>> consciousness has a lot to do with embodiment, and manipulating the
>>>> external world in complex ways successfully. Maybe Big Dog is closer to
>>>> consciousness than ChatGPT (or, more likely, needs it more).
>>>>
>>>> If Big Dog (or whatever the latest iteration of it is called) had
>>>> ChatGPT in its head, as well as all the other stuff it already has, would
>>>> it be able to build a canoe and use it to escape from a forest fire, decide
>>>> where it was safe to stop, and built a hut? That would be an interesting
>>>> experiment.
>>>>
>>>> Ben
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